Mobile media are becoming part of our daily routine in a multitude of ways, with consequences both positive and negative for community life. When a new technology like mobile telephony explodes into widespread use, society can expect more than a mild disruption. But what, exactly, is the status quo that mobile is disrupting?

In his 2000 book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Harvard University political scientist Robert D. Putnam argued that since the 1960s the United States has undergone a major collapse in social capital—chiefly through declining participation in our civic, social and political institutions—with serious negative repercussions. Putnam drew a distinction between two kinds of social capital: bonding capital, which takes place when people socialize with people like themselves, and bridging capital, which occurs when people befriend diverse strangers.

Jeffrey Abramson, professor of political science at Brandeis University, told the gathering that recent findings by Putnam led to two gloomy conclusions: First, that bringing people of diverse backgrounds together in modern cities has led to less trust and tolerance of each other. Second, and more surprising, city life produces atomization even within one’s own peer groups—people of the same race, gender or age. That is, the more people get to know and interact with each other, the more they hunker down, retreat into their shells and withdraw even from those they believed they had connections with.

Putnam’s research, based on interviews with some 30,000 U.S. residents and fully released in a 2007 paper, concluded that the more diverse one’s community was, the less likely residents were to vote, to volunteer in community projects, to give to charity, to trust local officials or the local news media, and to make close friends. [2]

Not everyone agrees with Putnam’s conclusion that America’s civic vitality is on the wane. For example, critics of his thesis hold that the rise of the Internet and the growth of small interpersonal networks more than make up for the decline in large, formal civic, social and fraternal organizations such as bowling leagues or Elks clubs.

Now add mobile communications to this already muddled picture. Can mobile lead to more cohesion, bonding within groups and bridging across new groups? Said Abramson: “One open question for us is this: Are there ways in which the new mobile technologies can bring about alternative ways to prop up meaning, deliberation and a sense of commonality, or will mobility ultimately produce growing ruthlessness, atomization and a sense of identity that looks inward instead of outward? We need to push back and resist the obvious ways in which mobility can lead to a kind of drift in society.”

Coming together for solidarity and affinity

The impact of mobile communication technologies on social groups heightens some preexisting dimensions, argued James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University. “People want a sense of belonging. In their social group you’ll see a lot of short, quick contacts as a way to improve in-group solidarity among existing members while making the entry costs higher for outsiders. While the dream has been that mobile communication will help to resolve misunderstandings and reach compromise and tolerance between groups, the reality is that as more information is exchanged, the boundaries become reinforced and intemperate words can often escalate into strident exchanges, resulting in increased polarization between groups.” Mobile helps to bond those with similar affinities, but in the United States so far it has shown little ability to bridge differences, he said.

“Mobile technology has done a tremendous amount to improve the world and on balance it’s had a positive effect,” Katz added. “Look at the rallies on immigration that brought people together in Los Angeles and elsewhere aided by mobile communication. We admire or dislike how these groups come together based on whether or not we agree with their cause. But in the end, mobile is helping to spur more of these kinds of spontaneous civic actions.”

William T. Coleman, founder and CEO of Cassatt Corp., was among those who pointed out that we move in and out of hundreds of identities during the course of a year, much less a lifetime. The Internet and mobile communication help facilitate bonding with new groups for short bursts of time and attention. “My identity for a short period of time last year was wrapped up in prostate cancer, and I was able to connect with a large number of people all over the world and get lots of valuable advice. I’m no longer identified with that issue. We move into new roles and form new bonds much more frequently now in the long tail. I suspect that bridging across groups or identities is more of a social issue than a technological one.”

Charlie Firestone, executive director of the Communications and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, observed, “It's almost a kind of swarming—people with common interests coming together for a time, exchanging information and then moving on.”

One defining characteristic of the Mobile Generation has been that mobility leads to a kind of rootlessness. “People change jobs all the time, they move around and they’re less tied to a particular place,” said David E. Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee. “The younger generation in particular feels that they’re mobile citizens leading lives of hyper-portability, and that translates into less of a sense of civic responsibility to a place or institution. It appears that they’re much less willing to become members of a community organization; however, they’re willing to be sponsors or contributors.”

Leslie Rule, who runs the Digital Storytelling Initiative at KQED, San Francisco's PBS station, suggested that mobile media can play a large role in engaging young people in their own communities. Holding aloft a mobile phone, she said, “These devices are receivers and communicators. They allow documentation and reflection. So we should be considering how to engage young people who are deeply disenfranchised by encouraging them to document the stories of their communities. These kinds of contributions to a collective knowledge could become a powerful form of civic engagement.” High schools should play a role in fostering this kind of creative participation, she said. “By the time the kids are 18, it may be too late to engage them.”

Joaquín Alvarado, director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University, urged the roundtable to focus not just on the mobile media end of the equation but to explore new dimensions of civic engagement that are now becoming manifest. “The dominant frame of reference for civic engagement was created by the baby-boom generation, and we’ve been living on fumes for 30 or 40 years. Mobile has the potential to replace those motifs with a new dialogue about social accountability, political dialogue and what kind of citizenship we want to have.” Mobile is not a new space but an extension of the space that we already occupy, he said. “In a nation with 300 million residents and innumerable small subgroups, economies and regions, are we presupposing a cohesion that isn't there? The deeper question is, what kind of democracy do we require of ourselves?”